One method for validating extensible markup language (XML) documents against an XML schema includes breadth-first validation. Breadth-first validation may include a traversal of an XML schema using a finite state machine (FSM). A FSM may be thought of as a model of behavior composed of a finite number of states, transitions between those states, and actions. Regarding breadth-first validation, there may be a parent node with child nodes A and B. Child node A may have child nodes C and D. In breadth-first validation, child nodes A and B of a parsed XML document must both be validated before child nodes C and D (i.e., descendants) are traversed using a FSM. In other words, the document must be verified to conform to a certain standard (e.g., XML schema). In this scenario, each top-level compositor represents a FSM, and new FSMs are instantiated upon traversal of child nodes (e.g., child nodes A and B). Unfortunately, this non-parallel, breadth-first methodology fails to properly leverage the core capacity available with parallel processing in multicore processors and/or multithread software processing.